


trouble is my business, business is my middle name. (how much should i put you down for?)

by brampersandon



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/pseuds/brampersandon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>rocket, though the eyes of many.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trouble is my business, business is my middle name. (how much should i put you down for?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthepilot/gifts).



> HAPPY YULETIDE, WTP! I THINK YOU ARE SUPER COOL AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY!! ♥
> 
> title comes from asofterworld #523.

  **i. star-lord**

Rocket is a ball of fury at exactly the right moments, a concentrated blast of deadly cunning and deadlier aim. Peter’s still working out how to best go about this whole  _taking responsibility for a team’s well-being and being their leader and stuff_  deal, he knows he’s no Captain America or Captain Marvel or… yeah, no, he’s no kind of Captain at all. But he counts himself lucky that his whole crew is worthy of the front lines. There’s no weak link, there’s not even a link that’s slightly weaker than the rest while still being pretty strong — except their combined general incompetence, of course. But whatever! They saved the galaxy once already, clearly their stupidity is pretty inconsequential as far as hang-ups go.

Still. Rocket is his ace in the hole, his trump card, his secret weapon. Nobody would look at him curled up asleep, this tiny mess of fur on a human-sized bunk, and know he’s a weapons expert, a formidable marksman and one of the greatest tactical strategists Peter’s ever met. Also, like,  _really_  good at squishing himself down to crawl into small spaces. Okay, maybe they’d expect that last one.

Of course, it’d be easier to take advantage of this if Rocket  _ever_  wanted to play his cards that way. Peter’s well-versed at acting the idiot (how much of it is an act, though?) to lure people into a false sense of security before he busts out the ass-kicking. Rocket’s more of a shoot first, ask questions never kind of guy.

“Why would I wanna make myself look weak?” he scoffs when Peter suggests that route once, only once. “I ain’t weak.”

“I know you’re not,” Peter sighs, pinching the skin between his eyes. “That’s the point, okay? You act like you’re this harmless little thing to get them to let you into the vault, and once you’re in there you kill the guards—”

“I got a better idea! How about I kill the guards first,  _then_  break into the vault?” Rocket stretches his arms wide in a gesture of  _eh? right? genius or what?_  before dropping them and snarling, “ _Harmless little thing_  — you got any idea how insulting that is, Quill? You won’t catch me pretending to be something I’m not, end of discussion.”

So, fine. Consider that strategy tabled indefinitely.

 

 

 

“Okay, as much as I like doing the Davy Crockett thing, your claws are like little needles— _ow!_ Dude, get off!”

“Who the hell is that?!”

“He’s the king of the wild frontier, jackass, you’ve seriously gotta get off me now!”

“You’re the jackass, jackass,” Rocket hisses, “Just keep your eyes forward, keep walking!”

Twenty paces later Rocket climbs down, hopping from Peter’s shoulder to the ground and glances up at their fearless (yeah right) leader. “That was my ex,” he explains, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the retreating bipedal… sea otter… woman-thing? “I had to take cover.”

Peter watches her go, mouth agape, staring for so long that he runs right into a spice cart and ends up paying out of pocket for ruined merchandise. “That wasn’t your ex,” he says with a shake of his head as he counts out units for the angry shop owner. “You don’t have an ex!”

 “What,” Rocket snorts, “You think you humanoid aliens are the only ones who get around? You got a lot to learn, Quill.” Units handed over, apologies said if not sincerely meant, they take off again. This was supposed to be an easy, in-and-out supply run. Rocket keeps yammering on, “All I’m sayin’ is you’ve been a Ravager since before your balls dropped, didn’t think you’d be so prejudiced against us _lesser species_. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it—”

 “Gross,” Peter groans, “So gross. God, stop talking.”

He’s got a point, though. If nothing else, Rocket is good for constantly enlightening him on the universe’s inhabitants in ways he’s not sure he ever wanted to be aware of. Still, now he knows. And knowing is half the battle. The weird, disgusting, interspecies battle.

 

 

 

 

 

** ii. gamora **

Silence is a friend hard-found on the Milano.

“I am Groot.”

“Who  _cares_ ,” Rocket groans, pressing paws to his (raccoon equivalent of) temples and leaning back in his seat. “Nobody, that’s who. Literally!  _Nobody_  gives a single stinkin’ shit about that but you.”

“Hey,” Peter snaps. “Somebody here probably cares about… whatever Groot said.”

“You don’t.”

“Yeah, but what if we do?”

“Trust me, Quill, you really don’t—”

“It would be in your best interest to let us speak for ourselves,” Drax interjects.

“Fine!” He jumps out of his seat despite Peter’s protests of  _dude no, stay buckled in when we’re at warp speed, you’re too little, you think I had that tiny chair made for nothing? also it was expensive!_   and starts pacing the ship, gesticulating wildly through the air as he speaks. “Micromorts. How many of you heard of ‘em?” Everyone glances at one another, faces various shades of blank. “See?  _See_! Ain’t no self-respecting assassin or outlaw or psycho murder machine that gives half a— whatever. So turns out a micromort’s a way of measuring the probability of death. One micromort’s a one-in-a-million chance whatever you’re doing is gonna kill you. We’re rogue bounty hunters, everything we do is knockin’ at death’s door and this idiot  _still_  measures out missions in frickin’ micromorts!”

“Death has no door,” Drax explains helpfully, “Unless it is the mad titan Thanos’ door. In which case, I would very much like to pay it a visit.”

“That’s a thing?” Peter whistles low and focuses his eyes forward again. “Wow. I’m drowning in micromorts, like, all the time.”

“Exactly,” Rocket seethes and points to Groot. “Told you, nobody cares, now quit bringin’ it up.”

“It is a foolish concern when one’s line of work is almost entirely centered around violence,” Gamora agrees, turned in her seat to face Groot with the ghost of a smile over her features. “But I find it almost… sweet.”

Rocket does a truly spectacular double take before laughing, “Yeah, you wouldn’t find it so  _sweet_  if you had to hear about it every time you suggested taking on a Sakaaran hit or twenty.”

The concept sits with Gamora throughout their flight, continues to gnaw at the edges of her consciousness when she eventually slips off to bed. For someone who has already lived through such colossal loss, who was then raised at death’s right hand, it bears strange weight.

 

 

 

“How long _is_ your lifespan?”

She can tell Rocket hears her from the way his ears twitch back, but he doesn’t answer, focused intently on the guns laid out before him. Not that she can entirely blame him; Ego’s armory truly is a sight to behold, everything shiny and deadly and theirs for just— “70,000 units?” Rocket sneers. “Half the parts are second-hand, it ain’t worth that much. This is highway robbery.”

“I asked you a question,” Gamora says, the already limited patience she has wearing thin.

“I could make something better than that,” he goes on, tossing the weapon aside and picking up another. “ _This_ one though— hello, mama.”

“Rocket—”

“What, you want me to build you a gun, Gamora? Maybe then you’ll come around on the whole blowin’ up moons th— _hey_!”

She snatches the gun away and blocks him off from the display rack, his every screech about how she has no respect at all grating against her ears. “Be quiet,” she commands, “Unless it is to answer me.”

“The hell do you care for?” he snarls back, arms folded tight over his chest, like he’s suddenly lost for what to do without a weapon in his hands. “You waitin’ around for me to die? Lookin’ for a replacement already? Did Quill put you up to this?”

“It’s an idle curiosity.” Sensing she won’t weasel an answer out of him by simply asking point-blank, she tries her best to soften somewhat. Easier said than done, of course, but there’s maybe one less barb in her tone when she says, “If we are to be a team, these are things we should know.”

Rocket stares at her for a long while, ears flattened back against his head before he answers. “Shoulda been seven years max. That’s how long it’d be on Halfworld, anyway. It’s been ten. Not sure how long it is with body mods.” He bares his teeth in something not quite a grin. “Guess we’ll all find out together! How’s that for team-building?”

Gamora purses her lips and hands him back the gun. He hugs it to his chest, murmuring _sorry the bad lady touched you, you’re safe now baby, I’m gonna take such good care of you, we’re gonna kill so many ugly Badoon bastards together._ “You are an unspeakably strange creature,” she points out and finds herself chuckling when Rocket answers her with a thumbs up.

 

 

 

The rest of them are slowly getting better at understanding Groot. Very, very slowly. None of them can automatically translate like Rocket does, but they begin to pick up on context and tonal clues, pick up on meaning hidden between the same three words. “I think it’s good of you to worry for Rocket,” she says carefully later that night as they attempt to organize the Milano’s complete wreck of a kitchen. It’s an ongoing battle. “For all of us,” she amends, “But he has little regard for the value of his own life. It is reassuring to know that someone does.” Micromorts are just one way of showing it, she understands that now.

Groot — half his full height now, waking up every morning with a new crown of fresh green leaves for him to pick off — offers her a smile. “I am Groot,” he says, and if Gamora strains, she can hear it: _Either all life is precious, or none is._

 

 

 

 

 

** iii. drax **

  
They’re past the point of  _vermin_ , past the point of  _creepy little beast_. Sure, sometimes they still have a few drinks too many and get into arguments over what amounts to nothing, and sometimes Rocket still pulls one of his guns into the mix before the others throw themselves between the two, but could anyone really blame them? Rocket is argumentative by nature, he can’t let a subject drop; Drax thinks he knows best and doesn’t realize not everyone’s skin is as thick as his own. They’re poorly matched and should almost certainly be never left alone together for extended periods of time.

He reconsiders the times Rocket has been slow to join up with the rest of the group — how ready he was to leave Quill and the Orb behind, his near-escape with Groot instead of rescuing Quill and Gamora from the Ravagers, his initial reluctance to team up against Ronan. Then it seemed like deliberate misanthropy — now Drax knows him well enough to see it for what it is. He may be a bloodthirsty vengeance-bent murderer, but before he was the Destroyer, he had a family, he had friends, he had a small but sweet pocket of life carved out for himself. He never asks outright, but he can tell that Rocket was never afforded that kindness in his life. This very well may be the first time he’s working and living alongside people who aren’t out to hurt him, people he could call friends.

It isn’t that Rocket doesn’t care. After settling next to him in the rubble of Xandar and providing some small measure of comfort, Drax knows Rocket cares — he’s just unsure of how to show it. So if his hackles raise, if he snarls and spits and antagonizes, it’s only because he’s feeling his way through new territory. 

“Uh,” comes Peter’s eloquent response when Drax shares this insight one early morning, navigating through a nebula neither know well. “That’s, like, _way_ deep, Drax. Thanks, I guess?”

“You are most welcome,” Drax says warmly, functionally deaf to the sass.

 

 

 

There are some roles that they fall into easily. Rocket has the most technical know-how, so he’s the brains. Star-Lord is quick to come up with at least seven new suggestions for a potential problem, so more often than not he’s the one making plans, calling shots. Who’s the muscle? Well, they’re _all_ the muscle, but nigh-indestructible Drax slightly moreso. Gamora has the strongest moral center, Groot is the most culturally sensitive and diplomatic, and both of them are killing machines when the want to be.

But there are just some arenas none of them have any particular experience in. When they get hurt —it does happen, quite often in fact, and it’s not like they always have Xandarian nurses to help patch them up — medic duty gets spread around. They’re all efficient enough, just not particularly _skilled_ — Peter whines and yelps about the limits of the Terran body when Gamora is too rough patching him up, Gamora nearly gets sick from the foul-smelling salve Groot needs for his regrowing limbs.

“Let me do that,” Peter gripes as Rocket tries to clean the wound on his shoulder, only to have the raccoon slap him away. “What the hell!”

“Back off, I got this!”

Groot waves his stumps about with an apologetic _I am Groot_ , as if to say he’d do it but he’s without arms at the moment. “I said I got this,” Rocket repeats through gritted teeth.

Quiet as he was after the battle against Ronan, Drax finishes tending to his own wounds before crouching down next to Rocket. Unlike his frantic batting away before, he merely glares at Drax before heaving a resigned sigh and handing over the bandages. Rocket doesn’t make eye contact as Drax crosses the bandage under his arm, over his back, careful to avoid the metal plugs, far more gentle than his hulking size would have someone believe. They’re both uncharacteristically silent, and when Drax finishes his work Rocket only gives it an approving nod before stalking off.

There’s a heavy silence in the med bay before Quill laughs, “You two are so weird.”

Drax weighs the comment in his head before nodding solemnly. “Yes,” he agrees, “We all are,” which only makes Peter laugh harder.

 

 

 

 

 

** iv. groot **

As far as prison breaks go, this one is gonna get ugly.

They all do, of course, but this one will have more bloodshed than most. Rocket can just  _taste_  it. The nice thing about getting jailed on Astra is it’s a little shithole of a planet. Good for its resources, sure, but that’s about all it’s good for. Well, and he’s heard they’ve got a killer opera house, which he was  _planning_  on checking out after he finished his mission because _yeah_ he likes the opera, screw anybody who might think he’s not cultured enough to appreciate art, but it looks like that idea’s been shot to all hell. Point is, nobody’s going to look twice at this place. Astrans are a peaceful people — hell, the guy he’s been tailing isn’t even a native, he’s a Rajak fugitive with a sweet little bounty on his head. The vast majority of them lead lives of quiet religious devotion and focus on creating art, not state-of-the-art criminal facilities.

Sounds like it’d be easy, right? Yeah, that’s where the flipside comes into play. The bad thing about being jailed there is that every single Astran, from the ugly bald baby born five minutes ago to the oldest and wisest high priest, can make any sort of metal obey their every command. Try to break out the old-fashioned way and you’ll find yourself in a newly-constructed cell in approximately zero seconds flat. And it’s pretty risky, picking a fight with a bunch of Magneto wannabes when ninety percent of your skeleton is metal itself, so he’s going to have to be sneaky, swift, and most of all, silent.

It’s here that he meets Groot, hunched over to fit in his quarters three cells down. When Rocket’s being ushered back to his own cell after his intake examination and snaps a rhetorical  _keep your mitts off me, why are you all so handsy_ , he hears the rumbling voice answer him: “I am Groot.”

“Right?” Rocket crows, craning a look over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the guy—  _tree_ , the tree who’s clearly been here long enough to know what’s up. “These guys don’t know how to let their guns do the talkin’—  _see_!” His voice gets shrill when the Astran guard picks him up by the scruff of the neck. “Who  _does that_?! Put me down, jackass, I’m not an animal!”

He hits the steel floor hard and throws himself against the sealed door, growling at the retreating guard. When he’s gone, the tree speaks up again. “I am Groot?”

“Course I can understand you,” Rocket sighs, rubbing furiously at the back of his neck. “What, these jerks can’t? That’s ‘cause Astrans are dumb as tacks, don’t take it personal.”

“I am Groot!”

“Flora— no, I’m no flora colossus. You seen me, right? Ain’t nothing flora about me. I’m just a hell of a lot smarter than your average… eh, anybody.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah? Huh. That’s weird. Well, congrats pal, I hear you loud and clear.”

“I am—”

“Shut  _up_ ,” the scaly blue dude across the hall shouts over them, and it incites the rest of the prisoners to join in until the guards come back in to get  _them_  to shut up. Rocket sets about stripping threads off his uniform shirt, tying them into garrotes and humming a little tune to himself. He won’t be here long.

 

 

 

Groot ends up seeking him out during meals so they can speak in peace, and before he knows it, four days later he ends up helping incapacitate (that’s the kind word for it) the guards. He watches Rocket scramble into the getaway ship and raises one branch to wave goodbye — until the raccoon pauses, glances over his shoulder and rolls his eyes. “C’mon, hurry up! Get in here, ya big lug.” He keeps talking as he deftly takes over the controls, “What, you thought I was gonna leave you behind? You killed half a dozen of those assholes, what kinda guy would I be if I ditched you now? I’ll drop you off back home.”

“I am Groot.”

He takes note of the way Rocket’s shoulders tense, the extra edge in his voice that wasn’t there before. “Yeah, what’s the saying? You can never go home again? ‘Cause it’s true.” The ship lifts off and they’re careening away from the planet, no direction in mind. “You can ride with me for a while then,” Rocket says, “‘Til you figure out where you wanna go.”

 

 

 

At the fifth planet they stop on (Sszardil, where Rocket has connections that’ll help them pick up a new ship, their next target, _and_ a few dozen cases of the finest reptilian-made booze this side of the galaxy) he asks one last time: “You figured out where you’re headed yet?”

The past months have brought two successful bounties, countless brawls, another prison break, one near-death experience neither of them would like to repeat, and a number of arsons neither of them will disclose. It’s the most fun Groot has had since he’s been on the run, and after witnessing how recklessly Rocket throws himself into every situation, he can’t even begin to think of not being part of it. So he shrugs his heavy shoulders and replies with a twinkle in his eye, “I am Groot.”

Rocket snorts into his drink before slamming it back, laughing through the burn, “Groot, that’s the lamest thing you’ve ever said.” He signals for a refill and considers it for a moment (whiskers twitching, fingers drumming against the bar, tail flicking back and forth; what Groot lacks in vocabulary, he more than makes up for in observance). “Fine, you’ll go wherever I go, ya big cheeseball. Partners, fifty-fifty, you got my back, I got yours. Deal?”

They shake on it, Rocket’s tiny paw in Groot’s splintered hand, and it’s a perfectly nice moment until Rocket grips harder and shouts, “And next three rounds are on you! You shook on it, Groot, the handshake is sacred!”

 

 

 

 

 

** v. some terran jerks **

 

Coulson knows.

Because _of course_ Coulson knows.

Clint rubs both hands over his face (not for the first time during this meeting, more like the forty-seventh) before turning his attention back to the screen. After all the shit he’s seen, the outer space super-friends shouldn’t even rank on the weirdness scale, and yet here they are sitting firmly in the number one spot.

“Seriously,” he sighs, “A talking raccoon?”

“For the last time,” the little guy cries, crowding in so close to the camera on the Guardians’ end that the entire monitor is filled with his furry face. “I ain’t no frickin’ raccoon!”

The tree pulls him back so the green girl and Natasha can continue their conversation on pan-galactic intel gathering, and Coulson inclines his head in Clint’s direction. “You see, Barton, things happen when you retire to your farm.”

 

 

 

 

 

** vi. the raccoon, the myth, the legend **

  
As far as Rocket can see, the main problem with the rest of the galaxy’s many varied inhabitants — and  _yeah_ , that’s a generalization, but he gets to make that generalization because he’s seen enough of the universe and met enough of the crazy assholes that inhabit it. Know who else gets that privilege? Pretty much nobody. Seriously, show him  _one_  other guy who’s gone back and forth across the galaxy as much as he has, from the darkest, dankest corner and back again. Know what?  _You can’t_.

Anyway, best he can tell, doesn’t matter if they’re from some backwater moon-of-a-moon-of-a-moon or a towering celestial metropolis, doesn’t matter whose side they’re on in whatever bullshit battle’s currently being waged. Doesn’t matter if they’ve got tentacles, seven limbs, teeth long as Drax’s knives, if they walk on their hands or if they communicate only through a series of clicks and screeches. The one constant that runs through all of them is the fact that they aren’t happy with themselves. Rocket can see it clear as day, even if they pretend they are —  _especially_ if they pretend they are. The more they puff themselves up, the more hateful they really are.

And Rocket figures that’s just one more thing that sets him apart from everybody else. At the end of the day, he can look in the mirror (standing on the counter to do so, balancing precariously between tubs of medical ointment and some sort of miracle growth concoction they’re trying on Groot and Quill’s sickening cologne) and like what he sees. Life’s not been gentle with him, he didn’t ask for any of this and he ain’t perfect, but generally speaking he’s pretty alright with himself.

Maybe if everybody else took a leaf outta his book, they’d be less pathetic — then again, Rocket reasons with himself, the galaxy can only contain so much badass at one time. If it’s gotta be him then it’s gotta be him. It’s a great burden to bear, but he’ll do it.


End file.
